In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
fsnotify: do not generate ACCESS/MODIFY events on child for special files
inotify/fanotify do not allow users with no read access to a file to
subscribe to events (e.g. IN_ACCESS/IN_MODIFY), but they do allow the
same user to subscribe for watching events on children when the user
has access to the parent directory (e.g. /dev).
Users with no read access to a file but with read access to its parent
directory can still stat the file and see if it was accessed/modified
via atime/mtime change.
The same is not true for special files (e.g. /dev/null). Users will not
generally observe atime/mtime changes when other users read/write to
special files, only when someone sets atime/mtime via utimensat().
Align fsnotify events with this stat behavior and do not generate
ACCESS/MODIFY events to parent watchers on read/write of special files.
The events are still generated to parent watchers on utimensat(). This
closes some side-channels that could be possibly used for information
exfiltration [1].
[1] https://snee.la/pdf/pubs/file-notification-attacks.pdf
CVSS
No CVSS.
References
Configurations
No configuration.
History
19 Oct 2026, 19:17
| Type | Values Removed | Values Added |
|---|---|---|
| CWE | CWE-200 |
15 Oct 2026, 02:18
| Type | Values Removed | Values Added |
|---|---|---|
| References |
|
Information
Published : 2026-01-13 16:15
Updated : 2026-10-19 19:17
NVD link : CVE-2025-68788
Mitre link : CVE-2025-68788
CVE.ORG link : CVE-2025-68788
JSON object : View
Products Affected
No product.
CWE
CWE-200
Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor